Somewhat new to pinball repair side of things. Bought this machine and it has mostly worked fine the entire time I have had it. However, playing with friends on Saturday and it ran into an error that I haven't been able to fix yet....

When I power on the machine, it just scores baseball runs non stop. The timer will run fine but the runs just go to infinity. I tried the reset coil in the back, start new game coil, the lock coil...no changes. When I look in the back, the big wheel is spinning non stop and the single, double, triple are all firing. I checked for a stuck ball or any coils to be touching but I don't see anything. Any advice on things to try? Happy to provide any more information that might be needed...

Thank you for the suggestion...I took a look at the switch for run appears fine. I will add there is a few seconds of delay between each run being scored. It seems like something is causing the machine to think a runner is rounding all three bases continuously and scoring a run

When I run the machine I can see the switches for homer, triple, double and single being fired in that order. Then the "run" switch. And then load. And it repeats this over and over again and will not stop. The big wheel in back is also constantly spinning.

I will also note that the pitch/swing buttons are also not functioning properly - a bit of a delay with both if they work at all. Very strange since everything was working great for the past year on it including this Saturday when it broke

Any ideas what to try next?

It also functions fine. If I manually stimulate the switch in the back it will cause a run. If it were stuck closed it would be generating the runs non stop in rapid succession. Instead there is a 2-3 second delay between each run and then it fires...always the same amount of time between each run...as well as the other switches mentioned above that also fire. I can get the runs to stop when the game over mechanism is triggered as well. But when a new game is started, the runs start again.

I do not have the schematic for the machine.

I checked out the homer switches and they all function normally when I manually use them. Also the machine has a lower/middle/upper homer slots..and they are not lighting up unless manually hit.

I just noticed that every 4th run scores 3 runs as well...so it will go:

1 run, 1 run, 1 run, 3 runs, 1 run, 1 run, 1 run, 3 runs.

A video link to what its doing..

Heres videos of the switches:

(Runs)

(Single, double, triple, hr)

The ball would normally drop into one of the slots (single, double, triple, hr) and land on a piece of metal that would close a switch. None of them are stuck closed though.

Thanks for the suggestion. In the back there isn't a switch on this game for the animations. I'm still a puzzled by it - especially because it happened all of a sudden during a game. The big wheel in the back is spinning non-stop which has writing beside it that mentions it "only moves on hits". And since the batter runs all three bases on the screen it seems like it thinks home runs are being hit all the time...with a double bonus being given every 3rd-4th hit.

There are three switches for homers at under the play field of the machine (lower, middle, upper deck) that trigger a main "homer" in the back box. I tried blocking the ones under the playfield with business cards to see if I could isolate one but the homer in the back box still fires regardless. I also get the feeling that when the homer switch triggers it may activate the single/double/triple switches to show the running on the back glass which was shown in the video.

Open to any ideas still and can provide pictures/videos of anything anyone thinks will help.

I will take a look tonight....I think I will have do more troubleshooting looking at every switch in the back and try to determine if I can figure it out.

There is a big wheel in the back with 4 switches on it that turns when a "hit" is made. The notches on the wheel are for single, double, triple, and home run that also hit switches when they rotate. Right now the wheel spins non-stop...whereas when the machine was healthy it only spun when a hit was made.

However...kind of a mystery as to whether a faulty switch is causing the wheel to spin or the wheel itself...or maybe a malfunction elsewhere. Either way, if anyone has any more suggestions more than open to trying and thanks for the help.

Solved!

On some close inspection I noticed that one of the switches had bent closed on the "Start Game" relay. People had been triggering it manually in the back so that makes sense that one too many made it bend. Not sure why that makes it fire off home runs...but happy it is fixed. If anyone else in the future needs help with this machine/pictures of a working one let me know and I am glad to help.

Thanks for all the help everyone!